View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEAMON QUEENEY | DISPATCHLily Eagleston, 5, left, and sister Lauren, 7, reach for a football against the skyline of Cincinnati. The girls’ family was tailgating before yesterday’s Ohio State spring game in Paul Brown Stadium.

CINCINNATI — With the hills of Kentucky looming across the Ohio River, a familiar cheer rang out on the plaza level outside Paul Brown Stadium.

A couple thousand fans clad in scarlet-and-gray yelled “O-H! I-O!” as if reclaiming land that is technically within the state’s borders but doesn’t traditionally belong to the Buckeyes.

The familiar sound signified how, at least for a few hours yesterday, there was no questioning Cincinnati’s allegiance to Ohio State in and around the stadium named after the man who coached the Buckeyes to the 1942 national championship before later achieving fame in pro football.

An announced crowd of 37,643 in the 65,535-seat stadium used OSU’s annual intrasquad scrimmage spring game to turn the Queen City, with its sporting loyalties traditionally split, into a temporary slice of Columbus.

“It’s great for the city,” said Bill Broxterman, public relations director for the Ohio State Alumni Club of Greater Cincinnati. “Sometimes Ohio State is an afterthought in this area. There’s a lot of competition here for sports attention. Ohio State is on the front page of your newspaper. It’s on page five of ours.”

Fans in Cincinnati and adjoining northern Kentucky normally pay more attention to the Reds and Bengals, with their collegiate interests split along iron-clad lines among the University of Cincinnati, Xavier, Kentucky and Notre Dame.

There are OSU fans down here, where locals joke that the South meets Germany, but they’re in the minority in fiercely provincial area.

“I’ve always looked at this city as its own state, and we’re very protective of our state,” said Lance McAlister, a Cincinnati native and host of the Sports Talk radio show on WLW-AM. “I always joke that there is a moat around this city, and if it happens outside the moat, the city doesn’t care. In this case, that’s clearly Ohio State. This city closes the borders to Columbus and Ohio State.”

The border opened yesterday, evident by the sights and sounds outside the stadium two hours before game time.

Fans in Buckeye gear grilled out, tossed footballs, and hoisted OSU flags outside cars and motor homes with the fight song and Hang on Sloopy blasting in the air.

“This is great,” said Jeff Norris, who made the 110-mile trip down I-71 from his Columbus home to attend the game.

Next to Norris sat his friend and fellow OSU season-ticket holder David Forman of Mason, who lived in Columbus for 35 years before moving to the Cincinnati area five years ago.

“Being a resident here of Cincinnati now, we certainly don’t get the Buckeye news like we would in Columbus,” Norris said. “Ohio State is more of an outcast here.”

While the stadium parking lot featured a mix of local and statewide license plates, the scene on the nearby plaza showed how the spring game allowed OSU football to serve as a one-day unifying force in Cincinnati, much as it does year-round throughout the rest of the state.

Before the game, about 2,000 fans enjoyed a “Buckeye Bash” — complete with cheerleaders, the spring pep band and the mascot Brutus Buckeye — sponsored by the OSU Alumni Association outside Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Bengals.

“To see this many people here, I can’t believe it,” said Betsy Donahoe-Fillmore, president of the OSU Alumni Club of Greater Cincinnati. “We’re wonderfully surprised at the turnout.”

The fans mingled on the plaza as speeches were delivered by Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee, athletic director Gene Smith, and former Buckeyes great Archie Griffin, president and CEO of the university’s alumni association.

OSU held its spring game in Cincinnati, where the Buckeyes hadn’t played since their undefeated 2002 national championship season, because Ohio Stadium is undergoing renovations.

The game also served as a kickoff for a series of local events aimed at helping the university’s $2.5 billion fundraising campaign, and it could help in football recruiting in a city that’s known for producing top-caliber high-school talent, although not always Buckeyes.

Ohio State currently has only two scholarship players — defensive lineman Adolphus Washington and offensive lineman Andrew Norwell — from the Cincinnati metropolitan area of 2.3 million people, something coach Urban Meyer, a 1986 University of Cincinnati graduate, aims to change.

Meyer made a guest appearance on McAlister’s show after national signing day in February.

“As soon as he hung up the phone, I had all lines full,” McAlister said. “You would have thought I lit a match and blew up the city of Cincinnati and set the river on fire. Callers were saying, ‘Why did you have him on? Why promote Ohio State football? How dare you do this?’ I thought I was going to have to protect myself.”

The Buckeyes were more-welcomed yesterday, as the game concluded with players and coaches gathering in the southwestern corner of the field to hear the OSU band play Carmen Ohio.